Religion
General Information
Religion is a complex phenomenon, defying definition or
summary. Almost as many definitions and theories of
religion exist as there are authors on the subject. In the
broadest terms, three approaches are generally taken to the
scholarly study of religion: the historical, the
phenomenological, and the behavioral or social - scientific.
Scholarly Approaches
Historical
The historical approach deals, of necessity, with texts,
whether these be the doctrinal, devotional, or ritual texts
that stem from the religious community per se or secular
documents such as statistics through which the historian
attempts to reconstruct the religious life of a community.
The historians may weave both types of documents together
to create a rich sense of the role of religion in the life
of a people as a whole. A particularly fine recent example
of this approach is Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou (1975;
Eng. trans., 1978), in which the social and economic life
of a small medieval French village is seen against the
backdrop of religious heterodoxy.
Phenomenological
The phenomenological study of religion, although often
starting with the results of the historian, is directed
toward discovering the nature of religion - the fundamental
characteristics that lie behind its historical
manifestations. In this particular field the classic
treatment remains Gerardus van der Leeuw's Religion in
Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology (1933;
Eng. trans., 1938). Many scholars of comparative
religion, such as Mircea Eliade, may also be said to fall
into this category, although their relations to the
historical traditions are often complex. The
phenomenological tradition has been criticized, both by the
historians and the social scientists, for losing sight of
the details of particular religions in overly general
comparison and speculation, but contemporary scholars are
attempting to overcome these problems by dissolving the
artificial boundaries between the disciplines.
Social
A clear example of this tendency may be seen in the rise of
social scientific studies of religion in the last hundred
years. Psychology, sociology, and especially anthropology
have contributed great depth to the understanding of
religious phenomena. In the psychology of religion, the
two most important figures remain William James and Sigmund
Freud. James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
established a set of topics and approaches to those topics
that set the overall tone for much later work in the field.
While James dealt primarily with conscious expressions of
religious experience, Freud and the psychoanalytic
tradition stemming from him attempted to fit the various
forms of religious experience into the framework of a
general theory of the unconscious. C G Jung in
particular has been influential among interpreters of
religion, in part, no doubt, as the best developed
alternative to Freud himself.
One problem usually associated with the psychological
approach is the difficulty of moving from the individual's
experience to the structure and experience of the religious
community. This problem has been confronted by the
sociological and the anthropological traditions since the
last third of the 19th century. William Robertson Smith,
Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber were the leading figures in
creating a sociological tradition in the analysis of
religion.
The year 1922 is sometimes taken as marking the beginning of
modern anthropology and with it the complex studies of
existing cultures and their religions that have done much
to illuminate contemporary thought about religion. In that
year Bronislaw Malinowski and A R Radcliffe - Brown
published studies based on in - depth field work in foreign
cultures. Their functionalist approach to the analysis of
religion became a school, from which a steady flow of
detailed studies of religion in cultural context continues
unabated. Perhaps the most eminent figure in this
tradition was Sir Edward Evans - Pritchard, whose influential
works continue to serve as points of departure for analysts
of religion.
Meanwhile, a French tradition was developing out of the
school of Durkheim that was in some ways analogous with and
in others opposed to the British school. In this context
structure has played a role akin to that of function.
Claude Levi - Strauss has developed a complex theory of the
way in which religious symbol and myth are transformed in
the articulation by a culture of the cosmos in which it
finds itself.
This brief treatment cannot do justice to the variety of
approaches to the study of religion, but one thing should
be made clear. Any approach taken in isolation from the
others will lead to distortion and bias. The attempt to
integrate a number of theories stemming from a wealth of
traditions is necessary to grasp the character of the
religions of the world.
Characteristics of Religion
Keeping in mind the dangers of general characterizations,
what are the distinctive features of religion? Several
concepts may be isolated that, even though not necessary or
sufficient conditions if taken separately, may jointly be
considered "symptomatic" of religions.
The Holy
Religious belief or experience is usually expressed in terms
of the holy or the sacred. The holy is usually in
opposition to the everyday and profane and carries with it
a sense of supreme value and ultimate reality. The holy may
be understood as a personal God, as a whole realm of gods
and spirits, as a diffuse power, as an impersonal order, or
in some other way. Although the holy may ultimately be
nothing but the social order, a projection of the human
mind, or some sort of illusion, it is nevertheless
experienced in religion as an initiating power, coming to
human life and touching it from beyond itself.
Religions frequently claim to have their origin in
Revelations, that is, in distinctive experiences of the
holy coming into human life. Such revelations may take the
form of visions (Moses in the desert), inner voices
(Muhammad outside Mecca), or events (Israel's exodus from
Egypt; the divine wind, or kamikaze, which destroyed the
invading Mongol fleet off Japan; the death and Resurrection
of Jesus Christ). Revelations may be similar to ordinary
religious experience, but they have a creative originating
power from which can flow an entire religious tradition.
Response
Response to the holy may take the form of participation in
and acquiescence to the customs and rituals of a religious
community or of a commitment of faith. Faith is not merely
belief but an attitude of persons in which they commit
themselves to the holy and acknowledge its claim upon them.
In a deeply religious person, faith commitment tends to
shape all of that person's life and character.
Beliefs
As religious traditions develop, they generate systems of
belief with respect to both practice and doctrine. These
systems serve to situate the members of the religious
tradition in the world around them and to make intelligible
this world in relation to the holy. In early or primitive
traditions this practice and doctrine usually find
expression in bodies of myth or in ritual
law. In those traditions which develop an extensive
literate class, Theology often comes to supplant myth as
the vehicle for refining and elaborating belief. The more
this happens, the more the belief system has to be
evaluated. The importance attached to right belief
("orthodoxy") has varied from religion to religion and from
period to period. It has loomed large in Christianity, as
for example in the great Christological and Trinitarian
controversies from the 3d century onward.
Rituals and Liturgy
Religious traditions almost invariably involve ritual and
liturgical forms as well as systems of belief. These may
take the form of Sacrifice or Sacrament, Passage Rites, or
invocations of God or the gods. The most important cultic
acts are in most cases those performed by the entire
community or a significant portion of it, although in many
traditions private devotional forms such as prayer,
fasting, and pilgrimage are also practiced. A distinction
is often made between religion and magic in this context.
In magic, attempts are made to manipulate divine forces
through human acts. In truly cultic acts such as prayer
and sacrifice, the prevailing attitude is one of awe,
worship, and thanksgiving.
Participation in communal rituals marks a person as a member
of the community, as being inside and integral to the
community that is articulated in the system of beliefs.
That in many traditions the disfavor of the community is
expressed in its barring a person from the important cultic
acts is not surprising because these acts insure the proper
standing of the individual and community in relation to the
holy.
Ethical Codes
Connected with beliefs is yet another aspect of religion,
the possession of an ethical code incumbent upon the
members of the community. This is particularly evident in
highly structured societies such as India, where the caste
system is an integral part of traditional Hinduism. Marduk
in ancient Babylon and Yahweh in ancient Israel were
believed to be the authors of the laws of those nations,
thus giving these laws the weight and prestige of holiness.
The Prophets of Israel were social critics who claimed
that righteous acts rather than cultic acts are the true
expression of religion. As religions develop, they come to
place increasing stress on the ethical, and sometimes
religion is almost totally absorbed into morality, with
only a sense of the holiness of moral demands and a
profound respect for them remaining.
Community
Although religious solitaries exist, most religion has a
social aspect that leads its adherents to form a community,
which may be more or less tightly organized. In earlier
times the religious community could scarcely be
distinguished from the community at large; all professed
the same faith, and the ruler was both a political and a
religious leader. In the course of time, however,
religious and civil societies have become distinct and may
even come into conflict. In modern secular states - India
and the United States, for example - a plurality of
religious communities coexist peacefully within a single
political entity. Each religious community, whether in a
pluralistic or homogeneous society, has its own organized
structure. A common though by no means universal feature
of these religious organizations is a priesthood
charged with teaching and transmitting the faith
and performing liturgical acts.
Forms of Religious Experience
The complex phenomenon described above constitutes what may
be called the religious experience of humankind. In
different religions and in different individuals, one or
more of the characteristics mentioned may predominate,
whereas others may be weak or almost nonexistent. This
difference explains why religion is best treated as a
polymorphous concept and why it is better to see religions
as linked by variable family likenesses than by some
constant but elusive essence.
Basic Forms
Even though many varieties of religious experience exist,
they seem to occur in two basic forms. In the first, the
sense of the holy is conjoined markedly with an awareness
of human finitude. This conjunction is expressed in
Friedrich Schleiermacher's characterization of religion as
a "feeling of absolute dependence"; it might be called the
negative approach to religious experience. The awareness
of the holy is set against the foil of finitude,
sinfulness, and meaninglessness. At an earlier stage in his
career, however, Schleiermacher defined religion
differently - as the "sense and taste for the Infinite."
Here the awareness of the holy is conjoined with the human
experience of transcendence, of going beyond every state of
existence to a fuller existence that lures on the human
being. This method may be called the affirmative approach.
Although one approach or another may dominate, both belong
to the full range of religious experience. Both find their
place in Rudolf Otto's classic, The Idea of the Holy (1917;
Eng. trans., 1923), as a person's encounter with the
mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Mysterium points to the
otherness of the holy; tremendum to its overwhelmingness
in relation to human finitude; and fascinans to the lure
that draws individuals out of and beyond themselves.
Otto's work has been regarded as a masterly achievement in
the phenomenology of religious experience.
Validity of Religious Experience
The question about the validity of religious experience must
also be raised. Do religious people or worshiping
communities encounter a holy reality that is outside of
themselves and other than anything purely natural?
Schleiermacher believed that the capacity for religious
experience is universal in human beings. He therefore
claimed that it could be accepted as self authenticating
and could take the place of the traditional proofs offered
for the existence of God. Few people today would concede
Schleiermacher's claim. Not only might they deny having
the kinds of experiences he described; they might also
suggest quite different interpretations for them. Many
traditional revelations, which seemed to be miracles in a
prescientific age, might now be judged as natural events or
coincidences.
Inner voices and private visions might be
explained psychologically as subconscious mental processes.
From Ludwig Feuerbach to Freud, belief in God has been
explained as a projection of the human mind; Karl Marx and
other social analysts have seen religious belief as the
product of socioeconomic forces. Each of these
naturalistic explanations of religious belief has drawn
attention to some element that enters into the religious
complex, but it may be questioned whether such theories
account exhaustively for the phenomenon of religion. The
question about the validity of religious experience must
ultimately be dealt with by returning to rational arguments
for and against theism or, more broadly, for and against
the existence of some holy reality, despite
Schleiermacher's arguments to the contrary.
A Typology
Any typology that attempts an ordering of religions is the
product of a particular tradition in which others are seen
relatively to its own centrality. For instance, starting
from the perspective of the Christian experience of the
holy as both transcendent and immanent makes possible the
construction of a series in which the various traditions
are related more or less closely to Christianity insofar as
they emphasize one or the other. That is, Christian
tradition strongly asserts the transcendence of God as an
essential element in its Judaic heritage, but it just as
strongly insists upon the immanence of God in the
incarnation and in the sacraments. Roughly speaking,
Judaism and Islam fall on the transcendent side of the
series, whereas Hinduism and Buddhism fall more on the
immanent.
A detailed analysis along these lines, taking
into account the variety of traditions within Christianity,
reveals illuminating affinities, as for example between
Calvinism and Islam and among the various mystical
traditions. Thus the construction of a typology, despite
the limitations of any given perspective, draws attention
to both the unity and diversity of religions.
Conclusion
In a world where the status and future of religion is in so
many ways uncertain, understanding of religious concepts is
not likely to be reached with extreme views, whether this
extremism takes the form of a dogmatic and isolationist
claim to the superiority of an individual's own faith or a
vague blurring of the genuine differences among the
traditions. A middle ground must be established by those
who accept the need for patient dialogue to uncover and
explore both the agreements and disagreements among the
religions. This third way aims at deepening the commitment
and understanding of religious groups in their own
traditions while at the same time making them more open to
and ready to learn from other traditions.
John Macquarrie
Bibliography
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The individual articles presented here were generally first published
in the early 1980s. This subject presentation was first placed
on the Internet in May 1997.
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